Article created by: Dominyka
Many people went into a flat spin when Katy Perry and the rest of her “astronaut” friends took a trip to space. Did they really go? Or was it all just a lie? The internet sleuths were on top form, searching for clues to back up their beliefs that the Blue Origin space tourism flight never actually happened. A similar thing occurred when the Air India plane crashed this year. Was the lone survivor even on the plane? The questions came in thick and fast.
If one thing is true, it’s that the world loves a good conspiracy theory. Defined as the belief that some secret but influential organization is responsible for an event or phenemonen, there have been dozens since the dawn of time. Many turned out to be utter lies. However, some ended up being totally legit.
When someone recently asked, “Which conspiracy theories were later proven to be true?” the internet didn’t hold back. There were over 3,000 responses. And some might make you question the things you once believed. Bored Panda has put together a list of the top answers for you to scroll through while you wait for the next big conspiracy theory to hit. Let us know your favorites by upvoting them.
Read More: 27 Conspiracy Theories That Were Once Dismissed But Later Shown To Be True
#1
McDonald’s villified the older woman who got burned by their coffee by saying she was greedy/faking when in reality they kept the coffee extra hot so it would stay “fresh” longer and she had 3rd degree burns that scarred her severely. She really only asked for her medical/lawyer bills to be covered.
Image credits: Gamora66
#2
Apple slowing down old phones to encourage more people to buy new models..
Image credits: QueenOfDemLizardFolk
#3
The Free Britney movement. It all started online as a conspiracy theory of her being held against her will. There were posts with videos of bodyguards watching her every move, people started to march for her freedom, it all ended up in court, it was proven it was the case, and she is gladly a free woman now.
Image credits: Wouldntbelieveme
#4
Cointelpro. The FBI actually ran a secret program to spy on and disrupt civil rights groups, anti-war activists, and other political organizations they didn’t like. This wasn’t just passive surveillance either, they actively tried to discredit people like Martin Luther King Jr. and infiltrate groups like the Black Panthers. It all came out in the 1970s when activists broke into an FBI office and leaked the files.
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#5
The Non-Fat/Low-Fat craze of the 80s/90s was created by the Sugar Industry lobby.
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#6
I don’t know if it was a theory but it was most definitely a conspiracy.
Johnson and Johnson knew their talcum powder contained asbestos.
Especially harmful to females because they make up the larger majority of users (outside of babies) It’s only relatively recently they were exposed. There’s more too it. One of many potential links below.
Paywall removed via Archive.is
Image credits: ATerriblePurpose
#7
Snowden. Before that we probably all assumed the government was probably spying on us, but to what extent was unknown and to think the answer was “everyone, all the time, any time” was in conspiracy theory territory.
Then Snowden was like no yeah, they know just about anything they could ever want to know about everyone and whatever you do digitally is completely at their disposal, as well as plenty of things you do in the physical world. Workarounds like Tor just slow them down or deter, but if they really wanted you in particular, they can get around that too.
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#8
Hemingway said the fbi was spying on him. Files were released after he died and they were.
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#9
There were rumors that the FBI infiltrated civil rights and black power movements. Turns out not only was it true, the rumors were spread by the FBI to further disrupt those groups.
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#10
That people (mainly Chinese) went to Thailand and got kidnapped and disappeared. Government of Thailand denied it for a long time because powerful people within the government and military was involved.
Fast forward a couple of years it turned ot to be true, people was kidnapped in Thailand and made to work in scam call centres just across the border in Cambodia and Burma. There are thousands of people still trapped in such places.
Image credits: East0n
#11
The lightbulb cartel.
They were a group of lightbulb manufacturers in the early 1900’s that purposely designed lightbulbs to fail after awhile so people keep buying more lightbulbs.
This included General Electric, Phillips, and other big-name manufacturers.
Image credits: Pizza_Guy8084
#12
There was a kid in school who told us his dad worked for the CIA doing mind control experiments using LSD on mental patients at the hospital in Moose Jaw Saskatchewan. LOL. AS IF. Welp… MK Ultra was real, run by the CIA at mental hospitals in Canada and they used megadoses of LSD. They admitted to a lot of stuff but never to the stuff in Moose Jaw. But there is no way this kid could have known this stuff decades before it came out unless he was telling the truth.
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#13
Idk about a theory as much as pretty much fact.
MLB ignored the mass use of steroids in baseball which peaked in the 90’s and early 2000’s because it was stimulating ticket sales following the players strike in 1994 where public opinion and interest in baseball was dwindling. It gave them a quick rebound and they only gave it attention when the health effects came to light more and congress got involved in the mid 2000’s.
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#14
TLDR: A conspiracy theory that South Korea and North Korea worked together to prevent a popular South Korean politician from being elected president was actually proven to be true.
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In 1990s South Korea, there was a suspicion that there was some funny business going on to prevent a guy named Kim Dae-jung from being elected as president. Basically, he was a left-leaning politician who favoured a more reconciliatory tone towards North Korea.
South Koreans in charge obviously didn’t like that. But surprisingly to some, neither did the North Koreans in charge. To legitimize their power, North Korea needed a South Korean enemy to fight against. Kim Dae-jung’s friendlier approach would threaten that.
So South Korean and North Korean officials cooked up a scheme. They met secretly in China, where South Korea gave money to North Korea to create border disruptions whenever Kim Dae-jung got too popular during election campaigns.
This became so routine that South Korean citizens nicknamed it the “North Wind.” It was a conspiracy theory that North Korea would do something to sabotage Kim Dae-jung whenever he got too popular.
Eventually a South Korean spy blew it wide open. He was posing as a businessman from South Korea who was interested in filming advertisements in the North, meeting North Korean officials in China. In reality, he was working for South Korean intelligence to gather proof and details of North Korea’s nuclear program.
During one of those stays in China, he happened to be in the same hotel and proximity to the North and South Koreans in the scheme and confirmed the scheme’s existence with his North Korean colleagues. He gathered enough proof of what was happening to threaten to go public, if they kept going with it. They didn’t and without the “North Wind,” it resulted in Kim Dae-jung winning the election.
Kim Dae-jung eventually became known as South Korea’s greatest president and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his North Korea strategy.
This whole thing was dramatized in the film [The Spy Gone North](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spy_Gone_North). If you want to Google more, the spy’s code name was “Black Venus.” None of this was publicly known until around the 2000s to 2010s, when the people involved were convicted.
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#15
Let’s ask famed trouble maker, Abbie hoffman. He suffered from bipolar I with psychotic episodes and claimed there was systematic harassment and attempts to frame “dangerous” people by the FBI
Well turns out he was right, and it was called COINTELPRO. It focused mostly on nonwhites, but also targeted people and groups it considered leftist.
Image credits: Styphonthal2
#16
Black Helicopters.
In the 90’s these were the equivalent of tinfoil hats. Conspiracy nuts would talk endlessly about totally silent black helicopters – modified Black Hawks – that could move around at high altitudes almost undetected.
The thing is – they were real the whole time.
When the US government sent in Seal team 6 to bag Bin Laden, they public announced that ST6 dropped in on two silent black helicopters, and had to blow one up to stop the technology from being recovered. That a thing they just said with their full chest, like it wasn’t a big deal.
Maybe it isn’t – but I just imagined a whole lot of conspiracy guys fist pumping because a thing they’ve been saying for 20 years was proved true.
Image credits: Ganglebot
#17
The Titanic splitting in half before it sank.
Although many survivors claimed it did, there were others that claimed it didn’t. Cunard & nautical engineers denied it, indicating there was no way that could’ve happened. I have no idea why, what difference would it make? Yet, until Ballard found the wreck, there was a lot of denial & debate as to whether it went down in one piece.
Image credits: Tgunner192
#18
Project Eschelon.
It was a conspiracy theory during the Clinton Administration about the US governmnet monitoring domestic communication. We later found out it was true.
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